Preferred interface for RGBW lights

WebThings
#1

I’ve been playing around with a WebThings router, and a RGBW light reflashed to use Tasmota.

The tasmota-adaptor was able to detect my light, but it had troubles because the Color property returned didn’t match the expected length.

I’ve played around with the code enough to get it to handle color in the ways that I would expect, plus the addition of a brightness property.

That much is working for me, and I am planning to submit a pull request to the author of tasmota-adapter to add that support.

That’s all just context for my actual questions. Currently setting the color to white is still using the RGB channels instead of the dedicated (warm) white light. The result is a relatively dim light.

I can currently set the light to white via the tasmota console and rest request. But I don’t know how this option is best represented within the WebThings interface.

I was also thinking about implementing a fade action. Unless I’ve misread the tasmota documentation interface, ‘fade from off’ can specify a duration in seconds, while a generic fade between any two brightnesses can only be specified with a speed of 1-20. I could construct a relationship to seconds for my devices, but I don’t trust that would hold true for anything else. If you were using it, would you prefer that fade was available but not accurate seconds or not having a fade?

#2

For bulbs, we decided long ago to represent RGBW and dimmable RGB bulbs with only a color property. HomeKit actually does this as well. From a hardware perspective, yes, there are 2 separate LED arrays. But a user shouldn’t have to understand that.

Brightness is a component of color, so we opted to let that be handled by the browser’s color picker.

For the fade action, I think it would be really confusing to have a speed/duration if it didn’t necessarily map to reality.

Also, @t1m1 is the author of the adapter, I’m sure he’d be happy to help. :smiley:

#3

Thanks, that’s pretty much what I was expecting based on the available properties. That means I have two choices, handle white explicitly and set the appropriate channel, or handle any shade of grey as white with brightness. I’d prefer to match the behavior of any other equivalent devices.

I won’t try to add the fade action then. Long term I’m interesting in adding a native webthing interface to my lights. Should be possible to add a fade action at that level.

Yes, I’ve seen a couple of comments from @t1m1. I will be contacting him when I’m happy with what I’ve done. That may require getting a couple of different lights to ensure it works with them. At least that’s the excuse I’ll use.